flemmings | Aaronovitchus Rex 5

Or, How I Learned to Speed Read. I am not a skipper by nature: I really do read every word. It takes a lot to convince me that in a given book, every word is not worth reading. Sixty-one Nails was such a book. Therefore I am finished it, and a load has fallen from my shoulders.

Yes it's a first book, but with all the concrit he says he received from so many people, it really shouldn't have the dialogue redundancies it does. It should be a lot tighter. Also I'm the wrong person for a male wish-fulfillment fantasy of 'but natch the Fae woman has the hots for me and is my own twoo wub.' I'm sure he tried to make this original, and it started out OK-- fae woman is in her sixties, or in a sixty year old female body, and hero is very slow at twigging to what she wants when she slips into something ~~more comfortable~~ younger. But he's still dull, and he still has unlovely male moments of 'Big Noise in Fairyland has summoned me? What if I say no? Or maybe I'll just run off and hide instead.' Resistance for resistance's sake, in essence; same with stone-walling the police, which has much graver consequences-- for the police, not our hero. Just as some men can't write women, I'm convinced some men can't write men: they can't see that their assumed norm is other people's bumptious, underbred, and really off-putting.

So I've started one of Seanan McGuire's October Daye books instead. It ought to annoy me as much as McLean's vampires do-- every sprite from the British Isles is currently resident in San Francisco, along with at least one kitsune. It doesn't, possibly because Toby isn't snooty/whiny like Wossname, the writing is brisker, and so far I'm not presented with hawt vampires. I'd like to have started with the first book but I'm at the bottom of the list at the library for that one. So I shall get all my backstory here in no.2. And then maybe start on the Borribles, if I can find where I put them.